Phone, Bus and Jam

Yesterday was non intellectual.

I used my free bus pass to go to Elgin to have my mobile phone fixed. When I lost it I got the online techies to bar and blacklist the handset and the sim card. That was easy and fast. Then I found the phone (duh!) and discovered that getting things unbarred and taken off the blacklist was not so easy.

The Vodaphone ‘chat’ people were painfully polite and pleasant. Twice they said they had found the solution and the phone would be OK again within 2-4 hours - but it wasn’t. The lady in the Phones 4U shop in Elgin was also very friendly and polite. She discovered that both the handset and the sim card are still blacklisted – they should be clear within the next 24 hours. If not, I can go back to her. There was no charge for the use of her time and telephone.

There is a bus to and from Elgin every hour. It takes 77 minutes to get from outside my front door to inside the St Giles Centre in Elgin. There are several mobile phone shops in the Centre – it is marvelously convenient.

The bus journey was comfortable and peaceful. Several of the passengers used their mobile phones as soon as they got onboard – presumably to tell someone that “I am now on the bus”. But then they just sat. Inactivity. Stillness. A social situation where it is acceptable to give up DOING.

So how did they get on with BEING? I had no way of knowing where their heads were at. Maybe in Limbo. It was a warm, sunny day and my attention centre was content to be passively occupied with the changing landscape outside the window.

When I got home I was moved to pick some red and black currants. Most years the birds get to them before me. But this year they are overgrown with long grass. This presumably prevents the birds from finding somewhere robust enough to perch while tucking into the harvest.

Red currants are more fiddly to harvest than black ones. Having picked the red ones you then have to spend time removing the stems. The black ones can be picked without gathering their stems.

I picked 300 gram of blackcurrants and made them into two jars of jam. The process is simple:

BUT – I overstated my case - the day was not entirely non intellectual.

I spent time in the Waterstones bookshop in the St Giles Centre. There was a good feeling to see books that I already own. I am on top of things! There is something pleasing about reviewing books in a bookshop rather than cruising online at Amazon. But then there is no immediate way of checking out new authors. I could upgrade to a smart  phone so I can check the internet anywhere anytime - the buses have wi-fi! - but this is not an urgent issue.

I also cruised W H Smith noting the cute bits of stationary that I did not buy. In the magazine section I bought a publication about WordPress and I read parts of it between Elgin and Portgordon. So ‘I’’ was not on the bus for a while. Attention was non-egoic and out of time and space. Concentration. Lost in a book. Old habits die hard.